


The Definitely Very Cool Life of Howard Carter, 100% Very Cool Except For The Parts That Weren't

by rowaning



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Gen, Pre-Canon, Serious Injuries, Timeskip, adhd carter, jailbreak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29782560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowaning/pseuds/rowaning
Summary: A brief autobiography of Howard Carter, thanotologist, world renowned stenographer, coder, and definitely-competent-at-his-job person.AKA filling in some blanks in canon with my take on Carter's history and how he ended up working with Wilde
Relationships: Azu & Howard Carter (Rusty Quill Gaming), Howard Carter & Oscar Wilde (Rusty Quill Gaming), Sasha Racket & Howard Carter
Comments: 61
Kudos: 18





	1. Look, We All Have To Start Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note on title conventions: the fic title and chapter titles are meant to be Carter's interjections as he tells the story of his life, and I had way too much fun making them.

“Do you know why I called you in here, Howard?”

Howard looked down at his feet and nervously shuffled them. After waiting a few moments for a response, his father gave a deep sigh.

“I don’t understand why we keep having this conversation. Look at me while I’m speaking to you, Howard.”

He shuffled his feet a bit more and peeked his head up slightly. Despite being seated at his desk, his father was still above Howard’s eye level. He gazed down on the boy with stern disapproval written across his face.

“Straighten up. You know how important good posture is.”

Howard stood straight and tried to push his shoulders back where they were supposed to go. His father frowned at the attempt and turned back to the letter in his hand.

“You’ve made your teachers quite upset. Doodling in your schoolbooks, speaking out of turn, bothering the other children.” The elder Carter returned his steely gaze to his son. “These outbursts are unnecessary. I expect better of you.”

Tears began to gather in Howard’s eyes and his hands balled into tight fists.

“Oh no, not this again. Why are you crying now?”

Howard looked back down at the floor and didn’t answer, as the tears began to slide down his cheeks.

“I don’t understand why you make things so difficult. You have so much potential, Howard. You just need to work harder and apply yourself. And stop fidgeting, just stand still.”

He tried to stand still. He really did, even if no one believed him when he said that. He stood as still as possible, until his hands twitched and his feet shuffled and his eyes darted around the room trying to look at something other than the floor or his father’s disappointed face.

His father gave another deep sigh.

“This is useless. I don’t know why I bother.” He made a gesture of dismissal towards Howard. “Just go. Do your homework and stop bothering your teachers.”

Howard turned and slowly walked out of his father’s office, tiny body held as tense as he could manage in an effort to keep his pace even. He wanted to run, wanted to sprint all the way back to his room and close the door so he could hide and draw, but Father would yell if he ran in the house again, and then Mother would yell too, and they would take his coloured pencils away and make him sit still in his room and do maths, and he didn’t want that. So he walked with careful, measured steps until he made it to the safety of his bedroom, then quietly closed the door and scrambled beneath the bed, pulling his workbook and pencils towards him and flipping to a page he hadn’t drawn on yet.


	2. The Cool Part Starts In This One, I Promise

What they didn’t understand was that school was _hard_ , even though sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes everything just made sense and all the numbers and words lined up right and Howard could spend hours getting every single one of his assignments done. Most of the time, though, he couldn’t keep his focus on the pages and all of the information and formulae slipped right out of his head and trying to get anything done was almost physically painful.

After a while, he started to figure out how to get by. How to hide his drawings whenever his parents checked if he was actually studying, how to use his bursts of energy to finish his work just before the deadlines. It worked well enough, except when it didn’t. Sometimes he messed up and had to listen to another lecture from his father, saying stuff like: “I have high expectations of you, Howard.” and “I know you can do better, Howard.” And, of course, his personal favourite: “You have so much potential, Howard.”

Screw potential. Didn’t really mean anything anyway. Just another way of saying “Why aren’t you better?”. Kind of like how “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.” actually meant “You’re not allowed to be upset about this.”

As if being terrible at everything academic wasn’t enough, Howard was somehow even worse at the social part of school. He was too scrawny to be included in the games the other kids played, and none of them liked it when he tried to join in on their conversations. No matter how hard he tried, the others all seemed to have naturally formed their own groups and none of them had room for him.

Sometimes the teacher noticed him sitting alone while the other kids played and told them to let him join in their games. That was even worse than being excluded. He could tell they resented him for it, for being weird and different and needing the teacher to make them include him. He tried to fit in, tried to copy the way the others moved, the way they talked, but he didn’t do it right and they laughed at him. “You’re so weird, Carter!” they would say. “Why are you like that, Carter?” “What’s wrong with you, Carter?”. And the inevitable: “Go away, Carter!”

He cried a lot, during those years when he was a lonely schoolchild. He cried when his father lectured him, when his mother yelled at him, when the other children laughed at him. It never made any difference, so eventually he learned to hold back the tears and shove down his feelings and just let it all wash over him until he had the safety of solitude, alone in his room, and could let it all out freely.

* * *

The years went on, and Howard adapted. He learned what to say to make the other kids laugh, and what not to say to keep them around. He learned to close off the parts of himself that no one was interested in hearing about, and he learned to take the rare moments of approval and affection he got and pretend that it was enough.

He learned how to pick the lock on his father’s liquor cabinet, and how to pick the new lock when it was eventually changed. He bragged about it at school and everyone was impressed, especially when he agreed to steal things for them. So he kept messing around with locks, dismantling them and learning how the internal mechanisms worked. It was way more interesting than schoolwork, and it kept his hands busy and his mind focused the way drawing did.

As satisfying as lockpicking was, it was nothing compared to the way people treated him now. He had friends, people who respected him. People who let him hang out with them, as long as he brought a stolen bottle of booze or agreed to help them rob a corner store. People who may not have cared, exactly, but they were _there_ , and they didn’t seem to mind when Howard leaned into them, or held their hands, or lingered slightly longer in a hug than was necessary.


	3. See? I Told You! Cool, Right?

When Howard Carter was 16 years old, his friend Marcus asked him to rob a fireworks shop so they could set them off in the field out back of the schoolhouse. The theft was easy, at that point there were very few locks that Howard couldn’t open and the shopkeeper hadn’t even set any magical defences. He brought his bounty back to the schoolyard, met Marcus, and the pair of them lit up all the fuses and then booked it into the nearby forest as the sky lit up and the police arrived.

Marcus was holding Howard’s hand and pulling him along as he tried to look back at the pyrotechnics that were still going off. It was thrilling, the lights and the explosions and almost getting caught but just barely escaping. The bursts and crackles captures Howard’s mind and all he wanted was to do it again.

Unfortunately, his pyrotechnic hobby did not last long. After mistiming a fuse, a charge went off in Howard’s hand and the cleric who treated the injury wouldn’t let him take off the bandages for a week. Fireworks were plenty fun, but they were _not_ worth losing his good drawing hand. But his escapades had opened up an entirely new realm of interesting things.

He started dabbling in magic, then experimented with swordplay, then moved on to throwing knives. There was something about the danger, the weight of the blades in his hands. The way people watched him in awe (and fear) when he demonstrated his new skills. The nicks on his fingers didn’t even matter, they were nothing compared to how good it felt when the knife thudded into the centre of his target.

He built up a stock of hobbies, enough so that whenever he felt restless he could dive into one until it exhausted his interest, then move on to the next. But drawing was always his favourite. He loved visiting the nearby museum and spending hours sketching the artifacts, daydreaming about what they once were, who they belonged to. He was always just a bit too loud to go unnoticed, but he was mostly left to his own devices. Until Lady Amherst approached him and offered him a job.

* * *

The Egyptian dig sites were the first place Howard Carter truly felt he belonged. Everyone there was so interesting. The archaeologists would talk to him for hours about their finds as he sketched them, and once he began to pick up the language the locals told him stories about gods and pharaohs, and showed him where to get the best drinks. No one cared that he was a bit too weird, a bit too loud, a bit too hyper, a bit too clingy. They just let him be himself, and even complimented his work, pretty often actually. It was brilliant, and Carter couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

He rose rather quickly in the field of archaeology, despite not having a formal education. He learned the tools of the trade and picked up computational skills as he and his colleagues began to work with the Ordinateurs. Eventually, he was regarded as an expert in his field, with funding from the British Museum for his expeditions and access to the Ordinateur in Paris for translations and analysis. Howard Carter was on top of the world.

And there’s only one place to go from the top.


	4. Ok, 100% Definitely Very Cool May Have Been An Exaggeration

It was gone.

Everything was gone. The translations, the computers, the funding. Something had happened in Paris and in the blink of an eye all of the computational infrastructure across Europe was just... gone. It took a full week to get a message to the British Museum and five days to get one back explaining that: No, they had no idea what was going on; No, they had no way of accessing his translations; No, they could not continue funding his expedition.

 _It’s not that bad_ , Carter tried to tell himself. His entire crew was laid off and either trying to find other work in Cairo or trying to get somewhere work could be found. He was alone in a hotel room that he didn’t have enough cash to pay for, with a transcription of the Rosetta stone that he couldn’t read. In the space of a week and a half his life had crumbled around him, and he had no idea where to go from here.

He tried to keep working on the translation, but it was impossible without his old resources. And the symbols slid out of his mind the way numbers and formulae used to, back when he was a kid in school. Carter grew restless, impatient. Pacing, fidgeting, trying desperately to recapture the calm he had found in his work but there was nothing left, nothing he could do, nothing that could keep him grounded.

* * *

Carter was drinking in a dive bar, the only place he could still afford to drink, when the man approached him. He was tall and thin, with a scar across one eyebrow, and he did not introduce himself.

“You the one that was trying to get into the pyramid?”

Carter heaved a dramatic sigh and scowled into his drink. His petitions to explore and document the tomb beneath the Meritocratic Vaults had gone largely ignored, and now there was no way in hell he’d ever get that expedition permitted.

“Not anymore.”

The man nodded and signaled for the bartender.

“Another round for me and my friend here.”

The distraught archaeologist sat up a bit straighter as the bartender produced two more mugs of ale and placed them in front of him and his new companion.

“I’m not one to turn down a drink, but I get the feeling there’s a string attached somewhere.”

The man took a swig from his drink and gave Carter a once-over.

“You’ve got good instincts then.” He downed the ale and set the mug down. “My employer is interested in something inside that pyramid. I’m looking for someone who can help him get it.”

Carter frowned, taking a tentative sip of his own drink.

“We still talking about the Meritocratic Vaults?”

The man scowled, and his eyes flicked to the bartender at the far end of the counter.

“Keep your voice down. And yeah, but don’t worry about that part. We only want you to navigate through the unmapped section of the pyramid. Getting into and out of the building is covered. If you agree, your name won’t come up anywhere you don’t want it, and we’ll pay handsomely.”

That caught Carter’s attention. He’d almost run out of cash and the inn he’d been staying at wouldn’t tolerate his presence much longer. And it wasn’t like he’d never robbed anyone, although the Meritocratic Vaults were a considerably larger target than a small town convenient store. It was something he knew he could do, and it was something that paid.

“Fine. When do we go?”

His new employer flashed him a sinister smile.

“Right now. Let’s get you acquainted with the rest of the team.”


	5. Tomb Curses: About As Uncool As It Gets

_Sneaking through identical hallways. Demolishing a wall and casting an illusion to replace it. Dark stone corridors, lit only by a single torch. Then even darker, the torch gone, just blackness surrounding him. Fumbling for magic, trying to fix it, and then confusion. Blood, a scream. The weight of the world descending on his shoulders and she was dead and everything was broken and horrible and it was all his fault. All his fault._

* * *

Carter had been sitting at the bar in a side room of The Pharaoh for three days now. He’d been migrating between there and the room he was renting whenever exhaustion drove him back to bed, and he always came back to the exact same spot, ordering another gin as if he’d never left. The gold coins he’d snagged while running through the pyramid had lasted him up ‘til now. He didn’t think about how much longer they would. Why bother? Everything was horrible and it was all his fault, he had unleashed that curse and broken the world.

No one listened when he tried to talk to them. To tell them what had happened, what he’d done. The bartender pretended to care because it was his job, but he wasn’t paying attention. He just poured Carter another drink and took his money and left him there to drown his sorrows. Everyone else avoided him, edging away from the drunk man raving at the bar, keeping their distance.

 _That’s fine_ , he told himself. _I deserve this. I deserve worse than this._ He sat, and he drank, and the walls swam and his head pounded and it did nothing to ease the guilt that had dug a pit in his stomach and made a home there.

* * *

Time got a bit wobbly after that. Carter had no idea how long he had been sitting at the bar, whether it was day or night outside, whether there even was a day or night anymore. Last time he’d looked outside there was a massive sandstorm and the bartender had given him a blanket and let him sleep in one of the cleaner booths. At some point he had moved back to the bar and ordered more drinks, either 3 or 7 depending on how he tilted his head when he looked at the empty glasses in front of him.

Someone new slinked up to the bar and sat beside him. She had short, dark hair and a nondescript face and awkwardly ordered a whiskey.

“Whiskey’s rubbish. You want gin.”

He pulled out a coin and called for another gin for himself and the lady, then faded out for a bit as she sat quietly next to him.

When the room swam back into focus he started talking to her, same as he did with any other patron who was unfortunate enough to sit next to him. Unlike the others, though, she didn’t leave immediately. She nodded and frowned and asked questions, and seemed like she might have actually been listening. Carter kept going, launching into a ramble about coding and technological advancements in the field of archaeology, just so happy that someone was finally keeping him company. No one had listened to him in ages.

Eventually he lost his train of thought and turned back to his drink. The conversation hadn’t alleviated the soul-crushing guilt weighing down on him, but just talking to another person and seeing them listen had grounded him, pulling out of the depths of his spiral and back towards reality.

* * *

At some point Carter noticed that his new friend had vanished, and there was the increasing volume of a bar fight coming from the front room. By the time he had stumbled to his feet and grabbed a bottle the noise had begun to die down, and the room was empty save a pair of paladins and the dark haired woman when he lurched in, waving the bottle to fend off any attackers.

There weren’t any, and all he managed to do was overbalance himself and fall down again. His new friend grabbed another drink, and one of the paladins- the little one- launched himself at her and hugged her. _That’s awful nice_ , he thought. He wouldn’t mind a hug himself. The other paladin started talking to him, asking him questions. He couldn’t help it; all of the guilt and self-deprecation came flooding out again and he just sat on the floor weeping and agonizing over how it was all _horrible_ and it was _all his fault_.

Large, comforting arms wrapped around him and lifted him up and he leaned into the big paladin’s breastplate and sobbed incoherently. She held him gently and lightly patted him on the back, speaking in a low, soothing voice. Her armour was glowing pink, which was doing nothing good for his headache, and the solid metal plating was pretty uncomfortable. But if you ignored that and the guilt, Carter was in heaven. Bundled up in the big orc’s arms, literally the closest he had been to another sentient creature in years, with only the weight of all the world’s evils to ruin the moment.


	6. That Time A Bunch Of Mean People Got Me Arrested

The paladins asked Carter some questions, and he tried to answer but he kept getting distracted. Eventually the big one carried him out of the bar and they brought him to a massive house on the outskirts of Cairo.

Things got blurry again, for a little bit. There was a halfling who looked a lot like the one who had gotten him into the bank, and the little paladin was mad at him. His friend from the bar left, which made Carter sad even though he had told her to leave in a dramatic fit of guilt. But then she came back, which was nice. And then the other halfling came in, the inside man, and then they were both sobbing and wailing about how the guard was dead and the world was broken and it was all their fault.

The big paladin shoved a gag in his mouth (Carter really couldn’t blame her) and picked him up again, which was a nice distraction. They brought him and the inside man to the local Temple of Aphrodite and sat them down in from of a cleric who had a very in-charge look about him. The orc pulled the gag out of his mouth and the cleric asked them a few questions before placing a hand lightly upon his and the halfling’s foreheads.

There was a cool sensation that spread throughout his entire body and tasted of mint. The room spun for a moment, and when it righted itself, the rest of the world did too. The guilt-laden fog that had encompassed him had lifted, as well as the hangover, and he could think clearly again.

His new friends asked what had actually happened in the tomb, and between Carter and Saleh they managed to tell the story. They had both been hired by a representative of Barret Racket to rob the Meritocratic Vaults. Saleh’s job was to get them into a VIP consultation room, Carter’s job was to guide them through the unmapped portion of the tomb. He had missed a trap, triggering magical darkness, and the third member of their group had turned on them. Saleh had managed to push her away, triggering another trap. She had fallen into a spike pit, and in the confusion Carter triggered the curse that had targeted Saleh and himself.

It was such a relief, having the curse removed and being able to think without that constant, horrible guilt. Well, he did still feel kind of bad about the guard, but she had tried to kill him so he figured they were even. Unfortunately, his new friends didn’t see eye to eye with him on that particular logical reasoning, and they were awfully keen to throw him in jail just for a little bit of illicit archaeology. Some friends they were. _Paladins_. Comforting, right up to the point you get de-cursed and confess to a crime.


	7. We Can't All Be Harrison Campbell Heroes, Barnes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The actual title is: We Can't All Be Harrison Campbell Heroes, _Barnes_

The cells in the Meritocratic building were too large to be claustrophobic, but too small to get a good pace going. Carter had been left alone in his cell, he was pretty sure Saleh was somewhere across the hall. Probably in the cushy cells that they reserve for rich people. He hadn’t tried to follow that confusion at the entrance about Saleh Junior and Saleh Senior and false confessions. It didn’t concern him. The only thing that concerned him right now was the fact that if he stayed in here any longer he would die of boredom, and that was not how Howard Carter planned on dying. Cave in? Sure, that’s reasonable. Fatal trap? Embarrassing but expected. Blaze of glory on a fantastic swashbuckling adventure? Unlikely, but extremely sexy. But boredom, boredom would not do.

Opening the lock was child’s play. Really, if the Meritocratic Offices couldn’t be bothered with investing in any security beyond a basic 5-pin lock then they deserved to be escaped from. And getting past the guards was so easy it was almost painful. The largest issue was the sandstorm. There was no way he could get out of the building, so he ducked into an empty office and locked the door behind him.

* * *

After the wind died down and Carter had made his way back to the Cairo strip, another problem presented itself. He was flat broke, and if those guards ever got their shit together he would be a wanted criminal. The sensible thing to do would be lay low and find a sneaky way out of the city, start making his way back to London where the museum could clear his name, maybe get to work on his next expedition. The thing was, Howard Carter did not get to where he was by doing sensible things, and he had no intention of starting now.

Getting back into the Meritocratic Vaults was... also incredibly easy. Why had they needed an inside man in the first place if dodging bankers’ notice was this simple? It was a bit trickier getting back into the tomb proper. Carter had forgotten which room they had gone through, and had to check multiple identical consultation rooms before finding the false wall. It was smooth sailing from there though. Get past the traps, gather enough ancient gold to make him a very rich man, then get back out and retire. Or fund his own expeditions. Or buy those expensive paints he had always wanted but never been able to justify the cost of. Or learn to fly a gyro-

His thoughts were interrupted by voices just past the false wall, in the consultation room he’d assumed would still be empty. He tried to sneak past, get a bit deeper in the tomb and wait them out, but he heard someone coming after him. The magical darkness was still in effect, so Carter figured if he could get past this stretch then he’d be in the clear. No one would pursue some random footsteps that deep into an unmapped ancient tomb.

After the first clink of a dagger hitting a nearby wall he slowed down, trying and failing to mask his movements with careful steps. After the second, he started sprinting. He had no idea who was after him, but his options seemed to be death or going back to jail, and really, it was a coin toss to decide which was worse.

Carter made it about 20 feet before the ground fell out from underneath him. He was in freefall for a moment that was much longer than he would’ve liked, and when he landed there was a wet thud and an excruciating pain in his leg. He heard his bag burst against the ground and his treasure scatter, gold bouncing against wood and stone. He couldn’t move his leg at all, and a quick blind investigation confirmed that he was impaled on a wooden spike. How was that for rotten luck; cursed, then jailed, then impaled in a tomb where maybe someone would eventually find his body, but probably not fast enough.

Someone did find him, way faster than he had expected. The person who’d been chasing him through the tomb was his ‘friend’ from the bar, the sneaky lady. The _mean_ sneaky lady, he appended the description. She tossed a rope down to him and he tied it around himself and waited. The rope went taut as she pulled, and it was _agonizing_. His leg jolted slightly up on the spike and he nearly passed out from the pain, not to mention the wave of nausea that rose up his throat.

She stopped pulling when he screamed, thank the gods. But then she started talking about going and getting her paladin friends to help, and that would be bad. Carter frantically did a cost-benefit ratio on the pros and cons of trying to un-impale himself and climb back up on his own versus being hauled out and immediately thrown back in jail. He tried offering treasure to Bar Lady to just let him go, and it almost looked like she would go for it when the goblin showed up.

Carter did _not_ like the goblin.

* * *

Somewhere between a conversation about morality that was probably longer than any thoughts Carter had ever had on the subject, some mess about whether it was worth these people’s time to actually haul him out of the pit, and an extremely annoying conversation (that Carter was pointedly excluded from) about mercenary contracts and right of salvage, Carter was removed from the spike, pulled out of the pit, and brought back to the consultation room.

The goblin was there- he had left after the morality talk- along with an _incredibly_ handsome, lean human wearing the kind of tailored suit Carter had always wished he could pull off. He eyed Carter up and down and the archaeologist gave him a saucy wink. Well, _tried_ to give him a saucy wink, if the slightly confused furrow of the man’s brow was anything to go by. Ah well, he’d never been any good at that particular facial expression anyway.

Several guards burst into the room and surrounded him, putting him in a gag and finger-shackles and hauled him out of the room. It was extremely uncomfortable, being tossed around like a sack of flour, and the cell they put him in clearly had anti-magic protections. That was fine, though. There was nothing Carter liked more than a good challenge.


	8. Jailbreaks Are Cool, Right? I Think They Are

It only took Howard Carter one week to escape Meritocratic custody a second time. 3 days to memorize the guards’ patterns, two to disable the enchanted lock on his cell, one to orchestrate a diversion and one to dislocate his right pinky to remove the finger-shackles.

It was the best fun he’d had in years.

They found him at The Pharaoh two days later. Apparently all property of the Meritocracy was imbibed with tracking spells for theft prevention purposes, including the extremely fascinating lock and shackles he’d been in the process of dismantling when the guards hauled him back to jail.

* * *

The clerk working at the front desk was the same one who’d been there the previous times Carter had been brought in, and he gave a pained expression and slumped in exasperation as the archaeologist was dragged through the doors.

“Mr. Carter. I can’t say it’s nice to see you again.”

The halfling sighed and began filling out a fresh pile of paperwork. Carter gave an exaggerated wink in lieu of a witty comeback, the guards holding his arms had gagged him before bringing him in. After handing some papers and a ring of keys to his captors, the halfling gestured them towards the door to the cell block.

“I mean really, do you have any idea how much you add to my workload when you do that? It’s just rude at this point. Can’t you just... I dunno, wait for your trial?”

Carter raised an eyebrow at the clerk’s exasperated plea, then shook his head and allowed himself to be escorted back to his cell. He craned his neck around as they passed through the door and caught a glimpse of the halfling resting his head against his desk and muttering in a voice too low to hear.

* * *

His next escape took a little bit longer than the one before. The locks had been changed, the enchantments reinforced, and the guard rotations had been completely overhauled. Carter was actually getting stumped and beginning to get bored, spending more time pacing and fidgeting around the cell than watching and planning. If it hadn’t been for a series of weird coincidences, he might have been stuck in there another month. As it was, he was out in a week and a half.

The guard rotation deteriorated, fast, and Carter couldn’t imagine why. Certain regular faces vanished entirely, and he could’ve sworn that the slack was being picked up by a select few more dedicated guards. Meal timings had gone wonky: he was still given three meals a day but the timing was completely random and the guards handing him the tray always seemed rushed and flustered. After all the work he’d put into the previous escape it was almost a disappointment how easy it was. He just got a bit too close to a guard, palmed her key ring, and slipped out the exact same way he had the first time he’d busted out of here.

He ditched the keys and the cuffs outside the back door of the building and wandered back into Cairo proper. It was quiet, way quieter than a city this size had any right to be. The Pharaoh was boarded up so Carter slipped into one of the tourist pubs on the strip.

* * *

He was picked up again that evening, having been kicked out of the pub for hustling poker so he could pay his tab.

The halfling clerk barely looked up from his desk when they came in. He had dark circles under his eyes, and the reception area was much more of a mess than it had been last time Carter came through.

“You again. Great.”

The clerk handed a stack of papers to the guard on Carter’s left, pre-written and filled out. The guard nodded and guided the archaeologist back towards the cell block, pausing for a moment as the clerk waved for her to stop.

“Hold up a sec. If you can get out so easily, why are you still here? Why not just leave? Getting out of Cairo can’t be harder than getting out of a maximum security cell.”

Carter tilted his head and thought for a moment, then shrugged. The guard scowled at him.

“Just leave it, Rami. Who knows what this one’s problem is.”

The halfling gave a _yeah, whatever_ kind of shrug, then returned to his desk, and Carter was brought once more to a high security Meritocratic cell.


	9. Shut Up Wilde, Let Me Tell The Story The Way I Want

“Hey, Carter. You’ve got a visitor.”

Carter rolled over on his cot and looked at the guard, intrigued. Who would be visiting him? Were any of his colleagues still in Cairo? The locals, probably, although why any of them would be visiting him in jail he had no idea. A shudder ran down his spine as he remembered the sinister man who had hired him to rob the pyramid. Maybe it was him with another ‘job’. Or maybe he was here to finish the job the doomed vault guard had started.

Carter’s guard stood at the entrance to his cell, impatient.

“Come on. Get dressed. Or don’t, I don’t care, but I need to escort you to the visiting room.”

He sheepishly pulled on his shirt and trousers and followed the guard out of the room, allowing shackles to be placed on his wrists. They had given up on making him wear the cuffs after the fifth time he’d removed them and casually handed them back to the guard who had just locked his wrists together, but he deigned to follow the security protocols outside of his cell.

The guard brought him to a small, too-bright room with white walls, a single featureless table and two uncomfortable looking chairs. One of the chairs was occupied by the handsome human who had been with Bar Lady and the paladins and the bank halfling. He gestured to the chair opposite and Carter sat, kicking back and putting his feet up on the table. The man frowned slightly and narrowed his eyebrows, giving Carter a scrutinizing look. _Two can play at that game_ , thought the archaeologist, and he scanned his visitor right back.

The man had much shorter hair than the last time Carter had seen him, closely cropped to his head but well groomed. He was dressed in what Carter figured was the same suit, although he’d heard people sometimes owned multiple copies of outfits they liked. He looked tired. There was concealer under his eyes, but it had been applied by a shaky hand. That was one of the reasons Carter had never gotten into makeup. Eyeliner certainly looked good on other people, but he’d never been able to hold his hands still enough to apply it properly. One time, back in Britain before he’d started going on digs, one of his school friends had done his face up, and when she showed him in the mirror he had hardly recognized himself...

“... found your work quite impress- Are you listening? At all?”

Carter’s train of thought was interrupted by a well manicured hand tentatively reaching forwards, then waving in front of his face. Right, there was a person there. Talking to him. Right.

“Yeah. Course I was listening.”

Carter tried to casually lean back and put his arms behind his head, then promptly lost his balance and toppled out of his chair. The beautiful stranger placed his head in his hands, rubbing his temples.

“Sure.” He sighed. “This was a horrible idea, wasn’t it.”

“Probably.” replied Carter, having no idea what the man was talking about.

“Great. Since you _didn’t_ catch it before, my name is Oscar Wilde. I _had_ found your work quite impressive, but I’m beginning to think my assessment was flawed. Now, I need to be going because I have quite a lot of work to do.”

The man- Wilde- stood and offered a hand to Carter, who scrambled up off the floor and awkwardly shook it with his own manacled hands. He cast a sly glance to the bored guard at the door, then leaned in close to Carter. He smelled good, kind of floral but not overwhelmingly so, and he whispered in Carter’s ear.

“Royal Alexandria, 8 o’clock AM. Tomorrow.”

“Wait, what does that-”

Wilde moved away from Carter and shook his head, silencing the archaeologist’s question. He thanked the guard and left the room, leaving Carter to be escorted back to his cell and puzzle over his message.


	10. If That's Not Cool, I Don't Know What Is... Don't Respond To That

‘Royal Alexandria’ meant nothing to Carter. ‘8 o’clock tomorrow’ however, did. Whatever this Wilde was telling him had a time limit. And it did not involve being in a jail cell.

The guards hadn’t bothered tightening security after bringing him in again, and if anything it seemed even more lax than before. Carter was almost tempted to lift a few of the more interested locks, before he remembered about the tracking spells. He had to duck into empty offices a few times on his way out to avoid roaming staff, and caught chunks of a few conversations. One administrator was upset that her supervisor hadn’t been in for a week. Another was complaining that they hadn’t been able to get in contact with the Dover office about a particular shipping dispute, not even via Sending.

Despite the frenzied manner of the staff, most of the building was empty and it was painfully easy for Carter to slip out the back door again. He wandered the streets of Cairo for a while, occasionally stopping a local when he saw one and asking if they had heard of a Royal Alexandria.

After almost four hours of poking around the nearly-dead streets, Carter eventually found some useful information. An orc businessperson had approached _him_ , asking for directions to a hotel, and when Carter asked they told him that they’d arrived in Cairo earlier that day on a ship called _Royal Alexandria_. Last they’d seen it was still moored in the port. Carter thanked the orc, pointed them towards an inn that had decent rooms for a good price, and made his way to the harbour.

* * *

The port had considerably more security than the building Carter had just escaped, which seemed slightly off. The _Royal Alexandria_ was a large luxury passenger vessel, and the records Carter nabbed from the harbourmaster’s office indicated it was heading for Greece. There wasn’t a passenger manifest lying around in the open and Carter didn’t feel lick combing through the filing cabinet, so he replaced the records and snuck on board the ship.

It was mostly quiet, save for a few crew members leaning on the rail and smoking. Carter had no idea what time it was but he figured it was past midnight, and most of the crew and passengers would be asleep in their cabins. He avoided the night watchmen's’ sightlines and found the captain’s office, picking the lock and letting himself in. There was the passenger manifest, lying on the desk in plain view. Carter flipped through several pages before finding the name Oscar Wilde. Apparently he was in cabin 2C.

Carter made his way to the passenger cabins. It was still and quiet, except for the creaking of ropes and the slight sway as the ship shifted in the water. He found Wilde’s cabin and listened at the door. There was a soft scratching coming from within, a sound Carter recognized as pen on paper. He tried the door. It was locked. Thirty seconds later, it wasn’t anymore. Carter opened the door, let himself in, then swung it closed behind him.

* * *

The cabin had been furnished with two bunks, a chest of drawers, a desk, and a single chair. Seated in the chair, at the desk, was Oscar Wilde. He glanced up from a stack of paperwork at Carter’s entrance, gave him a nod, then looked back down.

“Took you long enough.”

Carter just stood by the door, momentarily confused, then scowled.

“S’not my fault you didn’t say it was a boat. What’s the point of all this anyway?”

He crossed his arms and leaned back against the door. Wilde set his pen aside and looked back up at Carter.

“The point is: I have a job offer for you. If you’re interested, of course.”

Carter didn’t move from his position at the door.

“What’s the catch?”

“Well, it’s going to be quite dangerous and require a considerable amount of discretion-”

Carter cut him off.

“No, what’s the _catch_? You know? What big scary government building do you want me to rob and what kind of horrible curse traps has it got and are you gonna try to murder me once you’ve got what you want? _That_ catch?”

Wilde was giving him a look Carter interpreted as _I thing you’re messing with me but I can’t tell for certain_.

“Um, I don’t currently have any big scary government buildings for you to rob, but I’ll let you know if something comes up. As far as horrible curse traps, that’s not really my area of expertise which is why I’m trying to hire you. And I prefer not to murder people I’m planning on working with in the foreseeable future, especially since I prefer not to murder people in general.”

Wilde dug around the papers on the desk for a moment before standing and holding out a ticket to Carter.

“Look, if you don’t want the job you _can_ just leave. Hell, if you don’t want the job but you want a free ride out of Cairo you can take this and get off at the next port. I’m not here to coerce you into anything, just making an offer.”

Carter took the ticket and inspected it. Just a passenger ticket for the Royal Alexandria, destination: some port city in Greece. He tucked it into his pocket.

“Alright. I’m interested. Got some questions though.”

He pushed past Wilde and sat heavily on the bottom bunk. It was much comfier than a prison cot, so he kicked up his feet and laid back. Wilde returned to his chair and grimaced at Carter’s shoes on the neatly tucked blanket.

“Ask away.”

“Ok. Do I need to work with those people from before? The sneaky one seems cool but I think the others kinda hate me, and I don’t think that would go super well. Actually, why are you even hiring me? You’ve got a banker wizard and a pair of paladins and Cool Mean Sneaky Knife Lady, what are you doing with a thief that got himself arrested-” Carter did a quick count, “-Four times now? You must be desperate.”

Wilde’s face was a careful mask of neutrality.

“You won’t be working with the others. Suffice it to say they are occupied elsewhere. I have my reasons for hiring you.” He paused for a moment, then sighed. “It may not be inaccurate to say that I am... desperate. I need skilled associates and I’m running low on viable resources.”

“I’m in.”

Wilde raised an eyebrow at Carter’s response.

“Just like that? Nothing about pay, what you’ll be doing, where we’re going?”

“Nah. S’not like I’ve got anything better to do. I’ve seen most of Egypt, haven’t seen a lot of anywhere else.”

Carter rolled onto his back, placing his hands beneath his head. When he looked at Wilde, the man was giving him another scrutinizing look.

“Fine, fine. I’ll bite. What are we doing?”

The scrutiny was replaced with an almost mischievous grin.

“Well ideally, Mr. Carter, we’re going to be saving the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumble [@rowaningart](https://rowaningart.tumblr.com)


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